The Devolving Mind

I’ve been experiencing an interesting phenomena as of late that I can only describe as a slow and steady draining of my minds intellectual capabilities to the point where even the most basic tasks seem to be either completely pointless or entirely too difficult for me to perform. It’s hard to point towards exactly why this is occurring but I put it to you that it has to do with the idea that everything that is out in front of ourselves leads us towards both success and failure. Which is to say that ultimately your plan and thereby effected idea of how the immediate and distant future will go, will inevitably lead you towards either paths of- as I’ve stated earlier’ success or failure. Of course, when I think about it from that angle it is as simple as the unstable future of my assets and place in the world which is causing me a crash. I have work expected of me from multiple parties and of multiple unknown circumstances all at once. Both from the planned and unplanned- all at the same time. I would venture to say that this has more or less caused a bit of stress which could easily be correlated with my inability to perform even basic tasks with any sort of level of efficiency or happiness therein of my said efficiency.

It is hard to point towards a single solution as this phenomena has been plaguing me for the past month ever since my car was more or less put out of operation entirely, leaving me stranded down south away from my family for Easter- and to spend that next month trying to convince someone to buy the damn thing causing further distress.- Of course this is not the only time that I have experienced something like this, and not just with car problems but even with much more common things like schooling, after finishing very large tests and turning in work I wasn’t happy with I had many concurring fever dreams and unproductive days all relating to the idea that I could have failed any number of my classes without knowing the final grades and such. This is a constant thing which I have had to deal with, and I’m sure many other people have as well- so I figure it’s time to try and figure out a basic way of solving this, because surely there is a solution that I am missing.

We could of course try our very best to trivialize the outcome of the situation but this is a much more difficult task than one would realize when they initially attack the idea of this head on. Because often times this is the first answer to the problem which we will put forth and even if we seem completely okay for the day, once we lay down and try to put our heads to rest the idea pops up again. And after another bad dream, the idea is in the forefront of our heads for the remainder of the next day and thereon from that. No matter how hard we try to push it back it just seems to keep coming up, because the day of outcome is approaching and there’s no telling for sure what it could be! A recklessly dangerous attack to this problem it turns out that trivializing it does become.

So- what the heck do ya do when you face a problem like this then? I would put forth that it is not for trivializing the idea we need to reach but rather, we need to put yet another idea inside of our heads which does reflect a definite positive outcome- and secondarily place other questions inside of our mind which are difficult to ponder. This does not trivialize the outcome of the other event, but it gives us something positive to dwell upon- and backing away from that positive thing to dwell upon would rest our mind upon a difficult to answer problem. It is the nature of that combination which will put out minds to rest- of course, this is again not an easy thing to do. Because often times it is difficult for us to see positivity whilst inside of a stressful environment. I have the following ideas about steps that we could potentially take towards setting up this barricade within our minds.

First off we must calm down, breathe deep- listen to music- occupy your mind with active things. Solve a puzzle, play a game- do whatever it takes to distract yourself for a moment of though.

Secondarily we must ask ourselves a question which is large, larger than we can ever possibly comprehend- but just interesting enough for us to imagine near infinite solutions- my examples for this would be the following. At what point does an artificial intelligence achieve autonomy if ever? Can space truly be infinite?- And if so, does that mean that true nothingness can exist or that something exists forever outwards? These are just things I’d ask myself, equally interesting questions could be posed even about things like pizza, or new video games.

Third- I would suggest that you arrange a fun meeting with a friend in the near future, or to do something nice for the people you care about, whether this be your family, friends, or someone random entirely. It is important in this step that in the end we wind up feeling good about ourselves and the future reactions towards that thing that we would be doing.

From this point it’s easy, if we have arranged the third step properly, and we are actively doing the first thing we’ve started out with as a distraction for time- the secondary thing suddenly becomes the pure backup to this. And with luck and enough exhausting of the brain- when we go to bed after repeating these steps- they will be fresh enough in the mind to forget whatever that thing was we were worrying about earlier.

Of course, this is all just a long hypothetical, I haven’t even actually tried it- but I’m going to give it a go soon. And I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if it works for me, I recon this could certainly work for someone however, and if it even works on just one person it was worth it to put the idea together. And if it doesn’t work at all, at least I had something to occupy my brain and drag my worry away from the devolving of the mind I had been experiencing.